The painting “White Night” belongs to the period when the artist’s works were marked by the style of Art Nouveau – the most important style at the beginning of the 20th century. Munch turned to this motif many times. The work was painted in a small town on a fjord not far from Oslo. Munch bought a house on the shore and spent almost every summer there for many years. This is where he created many of his famous pieces of art. 

The bridge motif can often be seen in Munch’s paintings. The Moscow painting depicts three young women standing on a bridge motionlessly, staring at the water. Just like a mirror, the river surface reflects treetops, a house on the shore, clouds, and the sun. The bright local colors of the painting, together with conventionalized dynamic lines that sometimes run towards us, sometimes run parallel to the canvas plane, or sometimes are rounded in the girls’ hats and leaves, give the picture its simultaneous ornate expressiveness and meditativeness.